Choosing Web server software

The heart of any Web server is a utility called the HTTP daemon that will accept and process HTTP commands from browsers and return HTML Web pages. This basic functionality has been built on and enhanced by all of the 100+ software products that are now available to run your Web server. Some of the most popular server applications are available as freeware for download from the Internet and do, in some cases, offer better features and performance than the commercial products! Most of the commercial products enhance the basic HTTP service with links to databases, search engines that allow users to perform fulltext search on the Web site and security features that let you accept and process credit card orders on-line.

Choosing your Web server software is going to be difficult! There are now so many products with different features that you probably will have to evaluate a few products to see which you prefer. If you are a Windows-based company, there is little point looking at the Unix products since you would need to hire a Unix expert. If you want to provide an on-line shop, look for products that work with on-line transaction systems. If you want to provide a reference site, built-in search engines are important. And to enhance your site you should choose a product that lets you add features using your main programming language: Perl, Visual Basic, Delphi and Java are the common languages supported.

There are five main platforms...